Seahawks win playoff game, and BTW, Seattle rocks

The Seahawks' win on Sunday night was a wake up call to the rest of the country. Seattle is hot.

I'm not just talking about the NFL playoffs. Washington voters set nationwide precedence in November by legalizing same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use. Seattle rapper Macklemore's single "Thrift Shop" just went platinum. Even McDreamy wants to get in on the action, with actor Patrick Dempsey leading an investment group to acquire our coffee chain Tully's.

The Washington Post tried to argue that D.C. trumps Seattle but failed. I'm not going to argue about D.C. Because I'm not looking at you, I'm looking past you, to quote rapper Jay-Z.

I was talking to a 20-something, Evan Bush, at a holiday party. He's a Seattle Times news producer, 23, and just moved here from Missouri. "How are you settling in?" I asked. "I'm great," he said. "Seattle's on a roll." He extolled the recent wins with the legalization of same-sex marriage and marijuana, the success of musicians Macklemore and Alan Stone and the Seahawks' victories in the NFL.

My first instinct was to argue with him. We have so many problems. Traffic is a disaster in West Seattle, on Mercer Avenue, the 520 interchange. Early Windows 8 sales have disappointed. Seattle schools are failing our students. The Mariners.

I've also developed the type of resentment a nerdy, employed older sibling has toward a tattooed, slacker sibling called Portland. It's been the subject of endless food and travel articles and even its own TV show, "Portlandia." I was in Vancouver, B.C., earlier in January and stayed with a childhood friend who I consider the coolest woman I know. She said all their friends have vacationed in Portland recently. A pub called "Portland Craft" just opened in her neighborhood.

Back to the party and Evan's case for Seattle. I decided to keep my mouth shut. It was so Seattle of me to want to demur. Our Scandinavian and Asian ancestors told us modesty was a virtue and hard work was its own reward.

Evan was totally right. Seattle is winning. For real, not in a Charlie Sheen way. Who cares about the Mariners when Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch are wowing the rest of the nation? Who cares about Windows 8 when Boeing sales topped Airbus in 2012? Let's toast our success in sports, love, drugs and rock and roll. I'm spiking this football in the end zone and doing an airplane dance. Seattle rocks.

It's beginning to look like the early '90s, when Microsoft was booming, the movie "Sleepless in Seattle" came out and Nirvana rewrote the music world with the album "Nevermind." That was when California emigres began moving to Seattle en masse and the city's immune system tried to eject them like an organ transplant.

If 20-somethings think this is the hottest city to live, that's one of the best things we have going for our future. It means smart, ambitious people move here and they turn their energy toward making this city greater. They are this century's Yukon Gold speculators and miners, the ones who made a city out of a hamlet. They are the Californians who moved here and diversified our city 20 years ago. (And we owe it to our city's future not to reject these transplants like we did then.)